tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2065164884737080821.post8590608121583997172..comments2018-02-21T11:50:13.914-05:00Comments on Est Quod Est: So who's being "Binary"?Paulihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17506171638613025839noreply@blogger.comBlogger14125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2065164884737080821.post-77412302263667508812013-03-24T13:08:51.893-04:002013-03-24T13:08:51.893-04:00Talk about Romney and giving away to charity, I&#3...Talk about Romney and giving away to charity, I&#39;ve heard that Mitt gave away the money he inherited from his father, and the wealth he has, he earned.<br /><br />I totally agree, pikkumatti, that marrying into money seems to be &quot;acceptable,&quot; but I get complete cognitive dissonance since at some point, some evil capitalist had to have made it. But then being leftist involves a lot of cognitive dissonance.Barb the Evil Geniushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04635449477605703171noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2065164884737080821.post-2461413454615180532013-03-21T19:16:32.730-04:002013-03-21T19:16:32.730-04:00Also there are many wealthy people who give huge s...<i>Also there are many wealthy people who give huge sums of money away to charity. I&#39;ve never heard any of these scolds even mention that sandcastle-shattering fact.</i><br /><br />so true.Dianehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15528066705030924413noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2065164884737080821.post-4218502362397479872013-03-21T19:14:46.069-04:002013-03-21T19:14:46.069-04:00Yep. Very instructive.
And what about all the Sai...Yep. Very instructive.<br /><br />And what about all the Saint Kennedys? Their wealth (and even Jackie&#39;s horsies) were apparently just fine and dandy.Dianehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15528066705030924413noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2065164884737080821.post-33186784787399799172013-03-21T19:12:05.110-04:002013-03-21T19:12:05.110-04:00Well, you&#39;ll get no argument from me re corpor...Well, you&#39;ll get no argument from me re corporate bullying; I&#39;m only too familiar with it. <br /><br />Do wealthy <i>individuals</i> bully, though? Well, some do, some don&#39;t. Bullying comes in many forms. Wealth and power may enable some of the more pernicious forms, certainly. But you can be an ordinary middle-class bully and make people&#39;s lives pretty miserable. It&#39;s that old Original Sin thing, which is no respecter of class. ;) Dianehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15528066705030924413noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2065164884737080821.post-85364979147747286292013-03-21T10:54:52.550-04:002013-03-21T10:54:52.550-04:00Kathleen, that&#39;s exactly right. And they never...Kathleen, that&#39;s exactly right. And they never really back that assertion up. It&#39;s assumed that <i>everybody knows</i> that these people are cheating, somehow.<br /><br />Crim has an asinine &quot;Open Letter to George Weigel&quot; (who is a villain to these types, ostensibly for being a much better and more prolific writer) in which he mentions the 2008 crash as proof that we&#39;re all wrong about capitalism. But he misses 2 points: the point that many conservatives and libertarians predicted the crash due to the WRONG regulations and financial institutions behaving badly, misrepresenting products, etc. The other point he misses is that most of the bad regulations were done in the name of reducing the wealth gap between the rich and the poor, something that he crows about ceaselessly.<br /><br />The interesting thing to me is that whenever they publish lists of the richest people something like 80% of the names on it are different from year to year. In other words, rags to riches and riches to rags are both occurring pretty regularly. So the idea that certain people are invariably &quot;in control&quot; so to speak isn&#39;t really substantiated by reality we see. Also there are many wealthy people who give huge sums of money away to charity. I&#39;ve never heard any of these scolds even mention that sandcastle-shattering fact.<br /><br /><a href="http://contrapauli.blogspot.com/2007/08/wordsmith-intellectuals.html" rel="nofollow">This post on Wordsmith Intellectuals</a> is germane to the topic and always worth revisiting. Paulihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17506171638613025839noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2065164884737080821.post-5545806005426764582013-03-20T19:47:33.246-04:002013-03-20T19:47:33.246-04:00These people seem to equate &quot;free markets&quo...These people seem to equate &quot;free markets&quot; or &quot;economic liberalism&quot; with lawlessness. &quot;free&quot; to them seems to be &quot;free from law enforcement of any kind&quot; including laws regarding fraud, self-dealing, etc. Which of course is nonsense.kathleenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09760546833628880462noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2065164884737080821.post-57756754721622327012013-03-20T19:33:36.251-04:002013-03-20T19:33:36.251-04:00I had no idea that fr sirico was Paulie Walnuts&#3...I had no idea that fr sirico was Paulie Walnuts&#39; brother. wow!kathleenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09760546833628880462noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2065164884737080821.post-40624666633370141282013-03-20T17:31:41.259-04:002013-03-20T17:31:41.259-04:00I think Mr. Crim is one of those self-anointed, wh...I think Mr. Crim is one of those self-anointed, who &quot;believe that third parties can make better decisions than people can make for themselves, and particularly that they are those third parties&quot;. (See <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1OOSKBR9O8" rel="nofollow">the first couple minutes of this outstanding explanation.</a>)<br /><br />And if you are working from that belief, then the obvious conclusion about someone who made money in the marketplace is that he necessarily profited by exploiting the gullible (who lacked the wisdom of the self-anointed to make better decisions), or by circumventing the rules. IOW, his gains are ill-gotten. This of course makes discrepancies between the rich and the poor especially galling. <br /><br />Compare the treatment of Mitt Romney to John Kerry. The Kerrys have many times the money of the Romneys, yet the Romneys were vilified for making their money on the backs of workers and their dying wives. John Kerry got his money legitimately, tho -- he married into it -- and thus had no such taint. <br /><br /><br />pikkumattihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04929135762224920473noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2065164884737080821.post-12444189886387874082013-03-20T15:44:18.512-04:002013-03-20T15:44:18.512-04:00When Patrick Henry said &quot;Give me liberty or g...When Patrick Henry said &quot;Give me liberty or give me death&quot;, he was being totally binary, and being binary suuuucks.kathleenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09760546833628880462noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2065164884737080821.post-22740609141087954102013-03-20T14:56:22.772-04:002013-03-20T14:56:22.772-04:00Well, yeah Diane, I basically agree with you, but ...Well, yeah Diane, I basically agree with you, but I will cede the point that rich people could use their wealth and power to &quot;bully&quot; people, if you will. Whether this is SOP for them is another question altogether.<br /><br />I also have to mention that the government can push people around a lot more than big business, AND furthermore it <i>does.</i><br /><br />They love to point to wealth discrepancies between rich and poor, which is humorous coming from a medieval studies dude. Go back to the middle ages for REAL wealth discrepancies. Many people ate what they earned each day. Was that a &quot;capitalist system&quot;? And the nobility didn&#39;t even have to worry about eating--servants brought them food. Paulihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17506171638613025839noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2065164884737080821.post-54693276237016625682013-03-20T12:01:46.416-04:002013-03-20T12:01:46.416-04:00Generally people who are successful and rich. When...<i>Generally people who are successful and rich. When I look at someone like this (e.g., Romney) I say &quot;That man is rich because he is successful.&quot; I believe they see it the opposite way: &quot;That man was able to become successful because he&#39;s rich.&quot;</i><br /><br />I have never understood this mentality. Who the heck cares whether someone else is rich? Romney&#39;s wealth does not impinge on me and my family in any way. I am perfectly content with my little middle-class house, and guess what? No Evil Rich People are trying to take it away from me. So, where&#39;s the problem? Live and let live. Sheesh.Dianehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15528066705030924413noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2065164884737080821.post-7233373694861823892013-03-20T11:00:13.139-04:002013-03-20T11:00:13.139-04:00&quot;None of his three teenage daughters display ...&quot;None of his three teenage daughters display an interest in the Greek and Latin classics thus far.&quot;<br /><br />LOLPaulihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17506171638613025839noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2065164884737080821.post-46087727447905388422013-03-20T10:56:22.104-04:002013-03-20T10:56:22.104-04:00...the world&#39;s problem are all nails. Yes. I&#......the world&#39;s problem are all nails. Yes. I&#39;ve been thinking a lot about this &quot;contrarian totalitarianism&quot; tendency lately and I really think that it comes down to some deficiency in their intellectual development. These types have fixated on certain people in their own general &quot;camp&quot; in the 2-party system as being The Problem. Generally people who are successful and rich. When I look at someone like this (e.g., Romney) I say &quot;That man is rich because he is successful.&quot; I believe they see it the opposite way: &quot;That man was able to become successful because he&#39;s rich.&quot;<br /><br />Maybe they have evidence for their way of seeing things because all they detect is cronyism all around them. In my world, cronyism is virtually absent. So they have a different slur for people like me: new money.<br /><br />When it comes down to it, they are more obsessed than anyone else I know with money, they wish they had more and they are envious of people who do have more. I.e., they belong in the democrat party.Paulihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17506171638613025839noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2065164884737080821.post-44115285329602421752013-03-19T19:06:41.641-04:002013-03-19T19:06:41.641-04:00Finally, I&#39;m not sure whether or not Mr. Crim ...<i>Finally, I&#39;m not sure whether or not Mr. Crim considers those who pay him to write copy as his &quot;slave-masters&quot;, but I&#39;m pretty sure he is not a welfare case. . . . </i><br /><br />You are assuming that Mr. Crim considers himself to be one of the subjects that he is writing about. <i>Au contraire.</i> He is writing about the little people, you know. <br /><br />He, like others with whom we are familar, is an Observer and a Thinker. <a href="http://solidarityhall.org/author/ecrim/" rel="nofollow">See what I mean.</a> (Come on, he&#39;s developing a <a href="http://solidarityhall.org/what-pray-tell-is-a-thinkerspace/" rel="nofollow">&quot;thinkerspace&quot; over at Solidarity Hall.</a>)<br /><br />IOW, whatever it is he says, or whatever it is he prescribes, is not to apply to himself. <br /><br />By the way, speaking of binary, I find it curious that the conclusion he draws in his review just happens to match the very reason for the name of &quot;Solidarity Hall&quot;, namely <a href="http://solidarityhall.org/about-solidarity-hall/" rel="nofollow"><i>&quot;we are pushing back against another wall—that of ideological blindness—built jointly by camps representing the State on one hand and the Market on the other.&quot;</i></a> What a coincidence!<br /><br />To a child with a hammer . . . <br /><br />pikkumattihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04929135762224920473noreply@blogger.com